My concerns with using it are that the app itself languishes, or doesn’t get traction.
Is there any capacity to use a neucard with a recipient that doesn’t have the app?
Are there any plans to open this up to alternative clients / implementations?
Are there parts you can open source while maintaining a business around some portions of the product? (Such as the physical cards)
For sharing with others who don't have the app, the link you send lets them see your card's contact information on the neucards' website which they can act on. So, for example, I typically share my phone number, linked in profile, twitter handle, etc. and that works faster for me than just giving someone my number and texting them the rest. Also, by using card types, you can set up multiple cards (Professional, Personal, Friends, Minimal, etc.) and then have more control over what info you share initially.
I'm very much hoping to add Android and making neucards as universal as possible. Open sourcing would definitely help with that, but I'm taking a wait and see approach. The physical nfc tags were just added and if people embrace them, then it would make that approach more viable.
1) internet connection is available
2) that the neucard site is up and working
so it is in some ways an IOT of sorts, right?
For the NFC those two conditions are of course needed, but for the app, is there a "local cache" of contacts in case either of the two conditions are not met?
Or are these contacts automatically added[1] to the phone contacts?
And how does the updating works?
I mean, does the app "phone home" periodically or only when you ask for a given contact (or both)?
[1] even if in a possibly outdated version
As for adding info to the phone contacts, this is a tricky situation. Right now, I do not sync the contact info from received cards into the contacts on the phone. This is because the contacts on the phone are a shared resource that other apps can access, and I don't want people's contact info to leak. I do support caller identification, so you will see a person's name rather than just a number when they call for all of the numbers on your received cards. But, this isn't as robust of an experience as having all the info in the phone's contacts.
Maybe you could do the reverse, i.e. somehow allow the neucard app to "import" the standard contacts, if this would be possible, the neucard app could double as a "private contacts app" that might have more general use.